A map display control apparatus is mounted in a vehicle for displaying a map in an image display device. The apparatus sometimes uses a hard disk drive (henceforth HDD) as a device for storing map data for display. When used at a position of an altitude of 3000 m or higher, an HDD has a property to be breakable.
To that end, a technology is known which is equipped with an HDD along with a secondary storage other than an HDD, as a map data storage. In this technology, such a map data storage is switched from the HDD to the secondary storage when the subject vehicle advances into a high ground exceeding the altitude of 3000 m, thereby stopping the operation of the HDD.
For example, the map display control apparatus (specifically navigation apparatus) of Patent document 1 functions as follows. When the subject vehicle advances from a ground with an altitude of 3000 m or lower to an higher ground exceeding the altitude of 3000 m during the operation, the data in an HDD is copied to other memory (for example, flash memory as another rewritable memory) and the operation of the HDD is then stopped.
However, there is no description about the operation of the HDD immediately after the startup of the map display control apparatus in the Patent document 1. In general, immediately after being started, a conventional map display control apparatus having an HDD starts (i.e., activates) the HDD to thereby read data such as a program in the HDD. Therefore, in the technology like Patent document 1, when the map display control apparatus starts at a position or ground with an altitude of 3000 m or higher, the HDD may be automatically activated. In such a case, the risk of breakage of the HDD becomes high.
Patent document 1: JP-2004-317385 A